WHY we can not afford health care in the US...

by zeroday 57 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Gregor

  ...making sure the greedy bosses don't exploit the workers or the planet, ...

  Bks, there you go, stealing from Karl Marx again.
• 

  Gregor

  Six, thanks for the paternal pat on the head, makes me feel loved. Please keep posting responses like the last one, it saves me a lot time.
• 

  Sam Beli

  Many of you talk as though access to healthcare is a right. Is it? I am sure that most
  of us would support giving a helping hand to certain unfortunate individuals who
  through no fault of their own fell upon hard times; but what about others? For example, some
  JWs who elect to avoid education and the skilled job market that would have provided
  healthcare insurance to say nothing of retirement benefits for them and their families?

  Should all of society be required to pay for the healthcare that some refuse
  to work to obtain? I’m not so sure.

  A few years ago I became seriously ill. My local physician could provide limited
  therapy. He recommended a large healthcare facility several hundred miles away,
  but the doctors there did not want to care for me (I was still trying to be a good
  little JW at the time). I found a center over a thousand miles away that offered
  to care for me. If government had been running healthcare at the time I probably
  would have had little choice in where I was cared for, plus in the eyes of some here
  would have been too old to qualify for the expensive care that was required. It was
  private healthcare insurance of the PPO variety that I had carried for years that paid
  all but a few thousand dollars of my care. I had choice, I picked my doctors and I
  picked my hospitals. Government stayed out of it.

  Government runs the VA healthcare system in the United States. Many here know
  of the inadequate job that the VA often does. The recent Walter Reed scandal is a
  prime example.

  Private insurance adds too much bureaucracy sometimes; I will
  hate to see still more layers of bureaucracy added by more government intervention,
  but that is what we will probably see in the US. We usually get the government we
  deserve rather then the government we really want.
• 

  beksbks

  Bks, there you go, stealing from Karl Marx again.

  Actually Gregor, I had in mind more the coal mines, sweat shops, Dow, Love Canal.............etc. etc. I guess it would be somewhat correct if you said "there you go stealing from Steinbeck again".
• 

  amicus

  "The problem with US healthcare is that a large proportion is spent on administration and legalities than anywhere else in the world ... it isn't being spent on healthcare at all !"

  Bingo!

  Interestingly enough I just had a similar conversation with my Dermatologist. One of his comments to me was that every month more and more of his Dr. friends are begining to withdraw from the system, cutting their overhead and working fewer hours to keep the $$ from flowing to the Insurance Ind., Drug Company's, Hospital Conglomerates etc. The attitude he portrayed to me is one of disgust with the current system. No doubt the Doctors make a good living, but the big bucks are going to the big boys who are far removed from the actual patients.
• 

  Elgiard

  We already have a good model of what healthcare will be like once the federal government seizes control of it in the VA hospitals. I can hardly wait.
• 

  SixofNine

  "I will hate to see still more layers of bureaucracy added by more government intervention, "

  Single payer (or even other forms of government run health care) would strip away huge amounts of bureaucracy, as my earlier post pointed out.
• 

  Gregor

  ...and if you doubt the word of Lord Six, LOOK IT UP, DUMMY!